An online music store update

[SteveDallas]

Originally posted by smoothmoniker


... are worth. It takes more expertise, time, talent, and training to become an orchestral musician than to become a neurosurgeon.

And it takes 90 of them in the same room to make an orchestral recording.

I'm not saying you're wrong. I'm an amateur clarinetist and my wife is a violinist and conductor who's a member of the local AFM chapter. I am absolutely not on the record companies' side.

But the fact is what the current situation has produced is NO recordings of the orchestras.

I can't believe this is good for the labels, and I can't believe this is good for the orchestras, or for the individual musicians.

To take an example, obviously I pay attention to the clarinet playing when I listen to a piece of music. I can go down to my living room and pick up recordings of orchestral music with clarinetists such as Stanley Drucker, Larry Combs, Robert Marcellus, and Anthony Gigliotti. Unless some drastic changes happen, I will never have a recording of Ricardo Morales (the current principal clarinetist of the Philadelphia orchestra) playing in Rimsky-Korsakov's Capriccio Espagnol or Tchaikovsky's 4th symphony.

I'm not saying the musicians should do the recordings for free or sign away all their rights. (I personally think the smart thing to do is for the orchestras themselves to produce recordings, and a couple are starting to try.) But I guarantee that at least some of them will live to regret that they have left no recorded legacy of their careers.

So what is the union doing about it, I wonder?